The Horoscope and the Job Hunt

Horoscope readings aren’t really meant to arm you with excuses about your life’s failures learning opportunities. But they can provide insight about why, for example, you’re not yet the head of your company, President of the United States or, you know, gainfully employed.

One of the easiest ways to get a basic overview of this kind of problem is by looking at where the planets fall in your horoscope chart. For a really basic understanding, you don’t even have to know which planet is which, or what they mean. But if many of them are bunched down at the bottom of the horoscope, it’s probably harder for you, on average, to come out of your shell, promote yourself and maintain a consistent climb toward your goals. On the other hand, if you have lots of planets hanging out atop your horoscope chart, you likely have the opposite problem: runaway ambition, very little to ground you at the end of the day.

Thomas Moore gives us a great pair of real-life images — towers and ruins — to illustrate these problems. Towers, he says, represent ambition and departure from the past, while ruins symbolize groundedness and a sense of being connected to where we’ve been.

I don’t see towers as places of power as much as products of anxiety and battlements of fear, the shadow elements of our ambitions toward perfection. … To honor ruins would be to express our ties to the past and to acknowledge the wisdom of those who didn’t enjoy our technologies and information. (Moore, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life, pp. 94-95)

Moor’s insight echoes astrological wisdom. A top-of-the-chart, tower-of-ambition lifestyle can lead to excessive anxiety and workaholism; it can separate us from the things that most people agree really matter in life: family, home, roots. Nothing is ever big enough, tall enough, high enough.

On the other hand, a bottom-of-the-chart, holed-up-in-a-cave lifestyle can sink us into depression and lethargy, even hopelessness. We become afraid to express our individuality, to differentiate ourselves through goals and achievements and even quirks.

Both psychic structures are necessary at different times of life, but choosing one to the exclusion of the other can be harmful. It can separate us from essential parts of ourselves, and even belie our weaknesses in job applications and interviews. The highly-driven “tower type” will leak his ambition for the CEO seat when he’s interviewing with the CEO: generally not a great interview tactic. The “ruins type” often doesn’t get out enough to practice simply talking to people, much less to make herself visible and prove her uniqueness to potential employers. She might be too focused on the past and not enough on the future, the ambitions of the interviewer’s company.

Lucky for us, the horoscope chart not only describes our natural tendencies, it also suggests ways to overcome them.

And interestingly, whether you’re trapped in the tower or trapped in the ruins, the solution is the same: Get out and interact with people. That doesn’t mean managing, directing or leading others. It means: Talk and listen. Observe, put yourself out there, take back what’s offered you. Offer something in return. Exchange ideas, laughter, recipes. Move from a vertical orientation — too much looking up, or too much looking down — to a horizontal one, where you meet the world eye to eye, across the table, as a dance partner or a customer or a friend.

For some people that means networking. For someone else it might mean therapy, career counseling or life coaching (or seeing an astrologer!). For still others it could be having coffee with someone you’ve been neglecting, or taking a day off with your partner, or even going on a blind date. Whatever it is, it’s taking a break from the singular focus on that ladder from the ground to the stars. It’s becoming well rounded, interesting and interested.

If you’re floundering in the tower or in the ruins, engage with humans. Make eye contact. Listen. Talk. Listen some more, and some more, and some more. Enjoy it. Repeat.

Something will come.

Photo credits: Tower, Ruins